


Saudade

by scorchedmint



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-03-31 03:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorchedmint/pseuds/scorchedmint
Summary: It’s not something she’s ever been able to find on Earth; not even vaguely similar to any known (or unknown) language, and she had tried tirelessly to find the source of it. Pouring over every sharp angle, every gentle curve of the symbols;  never once bringing her closer to finding out what it means. Matt always gave her these pitying looks, because to have a soulmate mark on your arm in a language that doesn’t even exist?It must be torture.--Soulmate!Au Lotidge. I'm so very, very weak for them.





	1. A Flower That Shouldn't Exist

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I've been dying to write a soulmate au so here we are!!! Please leave a comment if you like it, I'm so excited to get this out here.

She’s always had this writing on her arm.

When she was born, printed in an unknown black script on her wrist was a name. Well, presumably. It was completely unreadable, a strange twisting set of characters, inked on her wrist as if it was meant to be something important. Not that it was rare to be born with a soulmark- it was just uncommon, mockable, a point of discontent more often than not. But little Katie didn’t know this, and really only grew up hearing about people who find their soulmates, a pre-destined person who would be perfect for you. Her mother and father never tried to hide the fact that she’d had it as long as she’d been alive.

In kindergarten, she’d study the strange shapes of the letters on her wrist, scribble them messily onto her papers during free play. As she got older and older, realizing that the writing on her body might not really be… normal, she began trying to figure it out. It stared up at her mockingly as she focused on it, desperately trying to decipher what it meant; a useless task.

It’s not something she’s ever been able to find on Earth; not even vaguely similar to any known (or unknown) language, and she had tried tirelessly to find the source of it. Pouring over every sharp angle, every gentle curve of the symbols;  never once bringing her closer to finding out what it means. Matt always gave her these pitying looks, because to have a soulmate mark on your arm in a language that _doesn’t even exist_?

It must be torture.

Pidge had been mocked for it in her school; not that they needed more fuel to add to the fire. She started to cover her wrist more- a cute bangle here, a watch there- just to try and forget that it was there at all. Why did she have such a _nonsense_ mark, anyway? The poor girl felt more and more like an outcast than ever, this strange soulmate name only making her more introverted, self-secluding, timid. Her classmates were less apt to talk to her, more likely to sneer than normal as she made her way down the halls.

She hated this.

Months later, after hearing about the disappearance and supposed death of her family, Pidge forgot about the silly little mark on her wrist, throwing herself fully into finding out the truth and deceiving her way through the Garrison. How could she have time to think about the mark when all she wanted was to find her brother and father? Lost in the vast expanse of space, cold, terrified, _alone_ ? Besides, as she follows after the trail of her two schoolmates, they were the most important thing on the planet to her. More important than some _faulty_ little mark on her wrist.

Then, as she’s thrust into a role she’s not sure she wants to fill, there was hardly any time to even remember that she had a soulmate at _all_ . She’s even had to put finding her family on the back burner as they blast their way through space, accompanied only by her former team at the Garisson, some guy that was living out in the desert, living proof that her family might be okay, and a princess with her attendant. If it was under… different circumstances, this might have been _exciting_ to her, _thrilling_ even; instead, this made her anxious, harsh. She spent all of her off-time locked up in her bunk, pushing aside the copious amounts of garbage she let pile up, looking over video feeds, trying desperately to find her brother and father.

She distracts herself with training, pitting herself against the Castle’s training program, against Keith’s sharp sword; against Lance’s quick shot. Batters herself dodging and weaving through Hunk’s cover fire; blocking and punching and _striking_ against Shiro’s metal arm. Wears herself down until she can’t move, laugh it off, and then pours all her sleeping hours into endless research. Eyes glued to the monitors she sets up near Green, sucking down the fifth energy-boosting drink she _begged_ Coran to bring for her. Its terribly bitter and sour, but it wakes her up, _keeps_ her awake, until the bags under her eyes are heavy enough that her face feels as if it may slip right off.

Pidge (a new name taken, in memoriam,) spends all her time like this, only sleeping when the rest of the team forces her to; Hunk prying her aching fingers from the keyboard, hefting her over his shoulder as if she’s some rag doll. Being smooth-talked by Lance into just “Taking a breather,” before she’d get drowsy walking with him and he’s led her back to her room. Keith’s silent insistence as he stares the young girl down from across the room before she get so uncomfortable in his dead-eyed stare that she just up and leaves. Shiro always gets to her the easiest though; he mentions her brother, how he wouldn’t want her to stress herself so much, that he’d want her to take breaks. Pidge only nods, slumping in her seat, and lets herself get carried back to her room.

This continues on for more time than she cares to count; her wrists are cramping, a slouch affecting her posture more often than not, and a penchant for looking over her shoulders. But she’s making progress. A single video of her brother has surfaced, and with bits and pieces of information, she’d beginning to get an idea about just where Matt might be. That little black scribble on her wrist was hardly a thought in the months leading up to finding him, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not half-looking for a translation. The more alien languages she sees on signs in pit stops, on missions, the _closer_ she feels to maybe getting an answer for this as well. Not that she could read most of them.

It’s not until she begins to decipher the Galra language that she begins to see some familiar shapes.

The program she made had not been an instantaneous thing; it took weeks upon weeks of research, of comparing what little she knew of Altean and English, cross-referencing the two languages with Coran’s occasional help. Building the database of words and phrases from the ground up gave her many opportunities to understand the written part of the Galra language and she didn’t quite know what to think when she finally stumbled across a familiar set of letters.

The simple, gentle curve of one, with that faint accent above it had her squinting, hand hovering over her covered wrist, the pulse under her fingertips steady against her skin. She could read it now, knew the sound it made, testing the syllable of it on her tongue.

“ _Lo_ ,”

Instantly, her fingers were flying across the keyboard, scraping through each individual character to find the ones that matched her own, inky black against her flesh, eyes darting across the lines on the screen. She’s- she’s never been this _close_ before, to finding out the name, her _soulmate_ , etched permanently into her skin and haunting her for years. She couldn’t explain why _now_ was different, after ignoring it and forgetting about it and trying _desperately_ to put it from her mind. Heart racing, eyes scanning the rapidly-moving lines on her screen, she paused the program. There, written plainly in her database, was the second and last character to this Galra’s name-

“ _Tor._ ”

She had… no idea who that was.

Slumping heavily in her seat, she drags a hand down her face, pushing up the sleeve of her hoodie and starting down at the name with a newfound curiosity. Pidge now knew two things; this person’s name was Lotor, and they are from an alien race that wants to conquer the entire galaxy. She just hoped they weren’t like the majority of the Galra that they had met so far on their adventures. Her sleeve fell back over the mark and she decided to keep this a secret from the rest of the Voltron crew- she didn’t want to see the looks on their faces, their judgements- especially from Allura.

Unconsciously, she would often find herself reading over Galran documents, news reports, history books. Looking for a _mention_ of this name, to try and put a face to it, a personality. It must be fairly uncommon, because by the time she finds something relevant, there’s no time to focus on it. Tossed into battle after battle, struggling to regain control of the universe, it takes over again. To the wayside are the thoughts of her mark, of what it means, of who might be the _other_ one with the strange, unknown language on their wrist, in the opposite side of the galaxy.

And then finding Matt- what else was she to do, but rejoice? But pull him along the long, empty halls of the castle and boast about her accomplishments, her _victories_ despite everything she’s lost? He’s just as excited for her, to _see_ her (he’s yet to release her hand from an iron grip); but eventually she winds up tugging him to her mess of a room, pulling up her laptop. Pidge was struck with the sudden fear that maybe… her brother didn’t think it would be good for her to seek out her soulmate. But he asks about the database, begs her to show him, so she does.

He’s always been an encouraging constant in her life, but he seems particularly proud of her now. He knows more about the common phrases and slang than she does, so they spend the next three hours huddled up on her bed while Matt clicks his tongue and makes strange trills at her, speaking a language that she hadn’t quite heard enough of to speak. It helps immensely, of course; though they had universal translators, there are certainly only some things one can say in their mother tongue. When the night grows long, and the drifting of stars outside her window feels like it's going stagnant, she rolls up the sleeve with her soulmate’s name on it.

“I can read it now,” Pidge says in the softest tone she can muster, laying back on the bed.

“Oh yeah?” Matt turns to her, his head brushing the wall on the bed nook. “What’s it say?”

And here she pauses, traces the outline of it with her fingers, feels the stuttering beat of her heart through her veins. She looks over at him, glasses smooshed up against her face, and says “Lotor.”

He seems to still, then, frozen in place, and she grasps her wrist so tight it hurts. “Lotor, huh? Do you know who that is?” He reaches out to tug her wrist from her own vice gripped fingers, running scarred fingertips over the letters. Matt reads it for himself, not looking at her, but not ignoring how she bites her own tongue.

“I don’t.”

“Well,” he releases her wrist (purple, bruised from her own roughness,) and runs a hand through his hair. “He’s sort of notorious for being a backstabber. But more than that he’s…” the look he gives her makes her heart stop beating- _pity_. “Zarkon’s heir.”

Of course. Nothing she wants could ever be easy. In that moment, her heart caught in her throat, she takes in a stuttering breath. All of the hopes, the _dreams_ she had for this person- vanish in an instant. She wants to scream, to punch something, to throw herself back into the harshness of battle so she has something _else_ to focus on. Matt watches her, reaches out to pull her into a hug, and she just _crumbles_.

“I just- I just wanted-”

“I know, Pidge. I know.”


	2. It Shouldn't Even Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Lotor.

Lotor was not born with a soulmate mark. His mother’s haggard breathing (her voice a croak, a drone, a mockery of herself) is all he knows; raised far from his father and eventually sequestered away to a small planet that becomes his home. He watches his mother with curious, yellow eyes as she grips the inside of her wrist, face screwed into a heartbroken expression, and counts the tears that fall to the floor of their humble home. With tiny hands, he reaches out to tug her hand, grip it in chubby fingers and clamber into her lap. She makes a noise somewhere between a faucet breaking and a bird singing, and pulls the hem of her sleeve back down. He doesn’t know why she stares at her wrist and cries, and she never tells him.

He finds her like that often, bent over double as she examines her own arm, hacking sobs shaking her whole body as she falls into herself. Her hair is white and drapes so heavily over her shoulders and face he wonders if she would be happier if she just cut it; but before he ever had such an opportunity to tell her his advice, she'd be pulling him aside for lessons and playing and he'd forget all about it. To the back of his mind would go the memories of a woman with too-yellow eyes, with red streaks down her face as if her grief manifested in bloody tears; of her bony hands, skin stretched tight across muscle and bone as she rocked him to sleep. Of her stark white hair, weighing her down and drowning her in her own sorrow.

When he gets a bit older, when the woman he was being raised by no longer visits and he is left to himself, he reads. About distant planets, about conquest, about curious little marks that appear on your wrist when the perfect person exists for you. Lotor has always been a bit of a stickler for fate, for _destiny_ , and he takes such things to heart. Which is why when he checks his wrists and finds nothing, for years and years and _years_ , he wonders if he’s unlovable. If perhaps, this is what someone like him might be fated to.

‘ _Oh well,_ ’ he thinks, rubbing his thumb over the thin flesh of his wrist. ‘ _Probably for the best._ ’

Wanderlust is a powerful motivator, and having decades to himself to research and study did nothing to help him. Littered about his study were dozens upon dozens of old logs, thick tomes that could crumble into dust if he looked at them the wrong way. Stacks of maps and digital logs clouding up his monitor, while he himself scribbled into notebooks and typed on a separate device. He was eager to abandon this rock, to get the opportunity to explore, to rocket off into space and see everything he possibly could.

He’s “conquered” his sixth planet before one of his crew brings it up with him casually. The Generals he travels with talk about the names on their wrists (except Narti, who cannot see if she has one and refuses to let others look for her), but he’s always refused to say. He doesn’t want to admit to them of this personal failure- not even having a soulmate is crushing as it is. Having four people mock him for it? Not really on his top ten list of ways to get burned.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust his Generals, of course; they’ve always had his back, have been there for him when he called- moreover its the fact that he knows how society works. Knows the looks of either pity or disgust he’d get, because _what a poor thing he must be_ , either unmatched in passion or _unfit for it_. They stare at him sometimes, wondering if their gazes could meld through the metal of his armor to see the wrists underneath,wondering if he was really just private or very ashamed.

Neither, as it turns out, are true.

Lotor has lived nearly ten thousand years before something happens to him. He doesn’t know what it is- a stinging, burning sensation tingles its way from his fingertips to his wrist, settles there, a searing heat making him hiss in pain and shove up the sleeve of his shirt. There, in simple script of a language he’s never seen, is a name. For a long moment while the sharpness of it fades, he watches in fascination- or fear. Long since accepting his fate as a singular being, this sudden appearance of a mark had his blood rushing to his chest, pumping his heart so loudly it is as if bullets are being shot directly into his ears.

Remembering to breathe shouldn’t have been so hard. He pokes the flesh around the mark, feeling the dull ache of it before tracing the letters feather-light with a delicacy he hardly shows anything. He’s read stories, of course, about star-crossed soulmates. There are countless historical records, fairy tales, folklore. Fiction to inspire the common to become extraordinary; to move simple soldiers into action. But he’ll be damned if those stories didn’t now hold some sort of charm to him, the allure unmistakable now that he actually _had_ a mark to be smitten with.

The first course of action was, of course, to decipher the language.

By the fifth year of trying, he’s grown increasingly frustrated. There hasn’t been a single planet with a language like this, similar or otherwise; he has no leads, nothing to _work_ with. They stop at some shopping center in the middle of nowhere, wearing common civilian clothes, to restock and to relax. He’s driving himself mad with the need for knowledge; the thirst for it has always been great, but this is a need that turned his bones to ash the longer he had to wait to find the solution. His generals leave to try some of the less-than-savory foods in the court, while he wanders aimlessly through the center.

A small shop run by some strange grey alien, finally, had the solutions he’s been looking for. He stops short just outside the store, staring at the strange bovine creature in the store, at the colorful boxes and clothes, wonders if the name on his wrist means that his soulmate came from such a colorful, strange planet. He’s waved over and by the time he leaves, bags filled with products in arm, he feels accomplished.

The rush of learning a new language (undocumented, unknown, _new_ ) hits him all at once while they’re aboard his ship, scanning over pages of magazines and dictionaries, of the short novels he was able to snag, of the unusual gaming system (why glove-operated?). The Generals watch him with interest, asking question after question about the seemingly useless things he began to obsess over.

Lotor spends many of their travelling nights learning one of the supposed many languages on this “Earth”. Having no idea where it is, he was mostly operating off the good word of the shopkeep, but matching the letters to the ones on his body? He’s never felt more alive. There are five of them there, in perfect clarity against his purple skin, and he writes them down as he learns them. First a ‘K’, then an ‘a’. He practices making the noise with his mouth, trying to mold the letters into the same sort of syllables he hears on the music discs he bought. It takes practice, and by the time he gets to ‘t-i-e’, he feels pretty confident.

“Katie.”

It sends electric sparks up to his tongue, courses through his throat. Again and again, he says it, gets used to the way to feels, fills himself with a strange sort of excitement that he hasn’t felt since he was a kit learning about the science behind the plants and skies. Wondering, for the first time, if maybe this was going to be something that works out for him just how he wants it; he thinks he deserves that much.

Another eleven years pass, however, and he’s no closer to finding ‘Earth’ or his Katie. Not for lack of trying, mind. He’s scraped through the marked territories, through the surrounding ones, the ones he’s heard only rumors of; nothing. Not a single thing. He life could never be easy, could it? One trial after another, and then the supposed death of his father- his inheritance calls. Prince becomes King, puts aside this particular quest for the time being, chases the tails of his father’s unfinished business.

Fighting the self-proclaimed ‘Defenders of the Galaxy’ was not part of his life plan; but tricking them into retrieving the Transreality Comet for him was a nice benefit. He knew that Voltron would be the only thing capable of such a task, but playing into their hands was not something he liked doing. In fact, getting so close to the Paladins was not his original intention; but manipulating them in combat was easy, shockingly, and getting them to accept his help after saving their skins long down the line was simple as well. Well, except for the part where he’s trapped as a prisoner on the Castle of Lions. That wasn’t part of his plan, but he’s nothing if not adaptable; he knows the cards that are on the table, counts them, calculates his next best move. The pilots of the lions themselves are all inherently distrusting of him (‘ _As they should be,_ ’ he thinks,) of course. They don’t visit him, don’t make small talk when they’re called to meet with him as a unit- except for the green one.

She paces in front of his cell, some days, not looking at him but not ignoring him, clenching her fists into such tight balls that he’s able to see the whites of her knuckles. Lotor never says anything during these times, just watches the way the green paladin picks at the edge of her coat, kicks the panels of the walls, glances up at him but scowls in the same movement. One day, as she’s going through the motions, his curiosity gets the better of him, and he finally speaks up.

“Green paladin, why is it that you pace yourself into a trench?”

Her pace falters, and she stares at him as if he has several new heads. “I- I can do as I please,”

Lotor nods, crossing his legs. “But why here? You clearly detest me.” She had been particularly harsh to him when he was brought aboard, always biting at him with a scathing remark, a sharp tongue to contrast her disarming height. “There’s no reason for you to torture yourself so.”

“I’m not-” He traces the tense line of her shoulders when she makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat, throwing her hands up in the air. “You’re just- it’s like you’re not bothered by anything. You’re aloof and won’t bend no matter how many times we question you!”

“What do I have to hide?”

Her tongue clicks. “We can’t trust you. It wouldn’t be smart. No matter how much information you give us, we just- we just can’t trust you.”

The way she says it strikes him oddly, but she turns from him completely, grumbling under her breath. After several long moments where neither of them seem to move, much less breathe, he speaks up. “It’s terribly boring down here. Surely you have some form of entertainment on this ship.”

Slowly, she turns her head towards him, expression curious, and his heart does a strange lurch in his chest. “...I’ll see what I can do.”

After that, they form a strange camaraderie; she lugs down giant books, a computer, and some other strange equipment Lotor’s never seen before. It looks archaic, but she just tells him it’s ‘Earth tech,’ and he becomes more interested. He divulges to her, carefully, that he’s been studying Earth culture whenever he can, but information is so very limited that finding not much more than scraps is leaving him starved. Pidge spends long hours after training and missions down there with him, passing through books and tech and comparing notes about whatever she’s working on with him. Not to say she stopped being rude or snarky- he had a feeling that was just her _personality_ , not that he cares- her quick wit was a welcome change from the calculated way his generals used to banter with him.

He ignores that feeling, too, of that strange tug in his chest when they happen to laugh at something the other does- the distance between them always increases after such a moment. The time passes as it always will, a bit too fast when she’s there, a bit too slow when she’s gone. He counts the ticks between her visits, reading and writing, hiding the evidence of her gifts in the small space provided to him when the whole crew interrogates him. Pidge avoids his gaze the entire time, acts just as crass as when he first arrived, so he stops looking; it wouldn’t do to strain the already shaky acquaintanceship they have.

Lotor wonders if this is what is should feel like, to open up to someone. He feels vulnerable as Pidge leans against the wall of his cell, her side squeezed up against it as she shows him something on her laptop. Her tone is hushed, whispered, as she runs him through their current history lesson. ' _Just because I'm captive doesn’t mean my brain deserves to rot,'_   he reasons as he takes notes on some war that holds no context to him.  
  
“I found a lot of this stuff pretty boring- I’m usually a lot more into mathematics and sciences.” She taps the screen, scrolling down at his signal to let him read a bit more of the old article. “But you seem to be into it.”

“I’ve always been intrigued by the history of planets, how they overlap with others.” Lotor shrugs, types something. “The wars of a planet are usually the most telling of its people. You can tell everything you need to know about a person by the stance they take in a war. Across hundreds of planets and species? Most are similar.”

He thinks maybe he can feel the heat of her shoulder through the hard light as he leans against the inside wall, fingers tapping against the tablet and scanning the web page. Tucking some of his hair behind his ear, he waits to see if she says anything back-

A gentle snore is all he hears.


	3. A Lightless Flower

Pidge wakes with a start, shoulders jumping as she feels her cheek un-stick itself from the hard light wall of Lotor’s prison. Had she… fallen asleep? She wipes the drool from her face and cheek, looks down at the laptop she’d been using on her lap- it had automatically shut down some time after she fell asleep. Looking to her right, into the cell block, she sees Lotor with the covers bundled up to his chin, sleeping fairly soundly. Her heart was hammering in her chest- she had fallen asleep, somehow, so close to him? What if she were to get caught?

As quietly as she could manage, she packed up the laptop and books she brought down, stuffing them into a ratty looking backpack before swinging it over her shoulder and high-tailing it out of there before she had the opportunity to keep staring. Pidge swore to herself that she wouldn’t let her guard down so easily from then on; she couldn’t risk falling asleep down there, getting caught- she ignores the strange twist of her gut as she rushes out of the room. Pidge doesn’t look back, doesn’t pay quite as much attention to her surroundings as she usually would be; and doesn’t notice the person leaning against the wall.

Allura tilts her head.

Curious.

* * *

 

She winds up falling asleep there more times than she cares to count.

Lotor spends months locked up in the Castle, and Pidge finds herself down there most days, just sitting in companionable silence. By some stroke of luck, the other paladins either haven’t noticed, or simply haven’t found exactly where she’s gone yet. If she has her way, they hopefully won’t ever find out that she spends her time reading with their enemy. Even though the information he’s been giving them has been good, she still doesn’t _want_ to trust him, to break the promise that she made to herself to not love him. It was proving quite difficult, seeing as she just… couldn’t _not_ visit him. He had to be lonely, to be bored; and if she could give him just a little bit of a distraction, then she couldn’t deny herself that.

If she just hung around, surely she would see his true colors, his personality. And thus far, all he’s been is smart and engaging and good at arguments; inquisitive and bold and- she shakes her head, flopping back onto her mattress, scattering a few food wrappers. Holding up her wrist, she tugs down her sleeve, stares at his name and tries to will it away. Thinks that maybe, if she just focuses hard enough, she can remove this stupid mark and the feelings that came along with it. Unassuming and irritating as ever, it just sits plainly on her skin, moving with her pulse, existing in the most simple way it can. Pidge groans, lets her arm fall onto the coarse sheets with a ‘ _thump_ ’.

She was so fucked. The whole situation was. It was eating her up inside, to keep this secret to herself. Maybe it would be good to open up to the other paladins- she shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes and turning over. “They’d never let me live it down if I said something, much less keep visiting him...” she reasons, pulling up the thin sheet and tugging it over her head. “I can’t just go around saying things like that.”

There’s a chime from her door, a gentle beeping to let her know someone wanted in. Groaning, she rolled out of her bunk, dragging her feet the whole way over to open the door. Hunk is holding up his hand as if to knock the door for good measure, but smiles when he sees her.

“Hey, you didn’t show up for breakfast, so I brought it to your room.” He gestures to the tray in his other hand. “Can I come in?”  
  
“Alright, but you know how messy I keep this place.”

“Part of it’s charm, really,” he chuckles as she lets him in, kicking aside dirty clothes and moving delicate bits of tech with less finesse than she really should. Pidge settles on the bed with him, not wasting any time (or giving her stomach the opportunity to grumble) before digging right in. Even if she missed Earth and all it’s wonderful foods, Hunk could make cardboard taste good if he wanted to, so the food was delicious as always.

“So, did you sleep in?”

“Nah, just… stayed up.” The lie is only so smooth because she’s told it before; she makes a sweeping gesture with her utensil. “Examining video feeds, still trying to locate my dad.”

Hunk nods softly, doesn’t look at her. “We’re still keeping an eye out too, you know. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”  
  
“I know, Hunk.” Pidge finishes in record time, setting aside the tray. They talk about their last mission, discuss the latest tech they managed to salvage from old ships they came across on some abandoned planet, poke fun at each other’s scientific methods. It’s as normal as anything, and she feels herself relax as the hours tick by. Before lunch, she’s laying back on her bed, looking up at Hunk. “Hey… can I tell you a secret?”

“Oooh, a secret? What’re you hiding, huh?” He teases, pokes her side with a finger as she swats at him.

“I’m being serious, Hunk, you can’t tell a single living thing about what I’m gonna to show to you.”

“Alright, alright- what’s so serious that you’ve been hiding it from us?”

For a few long moments, Pidge doesn’t move. She’s never shown or told anyone she knew after handcrafting her ‘Pidge’ persona about her soulmate mark, but she definitely trusts Hunk; if nothing else, she knows that a good threat will stop him from spilling the beans. Slowly, she sits up, rolls up her left sleeve, looks up at him with more raw vulnerability than when she saw Matt again after the search. She holds out her arm for him to read.

His own expression turns to concern for her as he reads it. He knows how to read Galran, had poured just as much of his time into deciphering languages as she had, so it doesn’t take more than a glance to read the name. Pidge doesn’t know when she started shaking, but Hunk doesn’t give her time to react before he’s giving her a side hug, crushing her meager shoulders against him.

“So that’s it then, huh? God.” Hunk mutters, his grip tight but not bruising. “That’s- how long has it been there?”

“All my life.” She mumbles into his chest, her own shorter arm looping around his back. “I was only able to read it a bit before I found Matt. Didn’t know who he was until he told me.”

“Pidge,” and she wishes the pity didn’t seep into his tone, into the gentle embrace, into the core reaction of who she considered her best friend. “...do you… like him?”

“That’s the thing!” she hisses, pulling away and crossing her arms a bit indignantly. “I want to hate him so bad, but I just- every time I go to see him I can’t help but-”

“You go to see him?”

“...I sneak down there and give him stuff to do. I’m teaching him about Earth.”

Hunk wiggles his eyebrows, but the implication mortifies her, so she gives his arm a firm punch. He laughs, musses her hair, and the sheer relief that she feels that he doesn’t think differently of her- she feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

“Whoah, Pidge, it’s ok!”

“Shut- shut up,”

From then on, she feels a bit better about the whole… soulmate thing. Hunk doesn’t judge her for it, knows that the turn of fate and its whims are beyond their control. He teases her about the mark in private, when they’re huddled up at desks running drills near Green. If this is what having a normal soulmate mark feels like, she’s relieved; it feels different from the harsh teasing of her classmates, from the neighbors, the countless doctors and linguists she went to. Just Hunk and her, making a back-and-forth commentary about how maybe the Galra express affection, if the culture shock will be too great. He lets her gush about their late-night excursions, about things she finds cute about him, takes it all in stride.

Hunk gives her the opportunity to feel like a normal person and she’s always going to be grateful to him for that. Pidge just worries that maybe now she’s letting her hopes get too high; no matter how fondly she thinks of the way Lotor bites his lip when he focuses, or the way he mutters under his breath when an answer eludes him- she can’t afford to let her guard down. Nonetheless, she still asks Hunk to keep the others away from the cells when she’s down there, spends her weeks there, pressed flush against the hard light walls of his prison and banters with him, exchanges ideas, bounces her problems off him to relatively simple solutions.

In the dead of night (not that it matters; they’re in space, only the simulated sunlight telling her when time passes), she sits down in front of him, presses her fingertips against the cold wall, the floor. Divulges to him that she’s looking for someone, that’s she’s run out of leads and how she’s getting nowhere.

“Who is it, then?” He asks, sitting close enough to her that if there wasn’t something separating them, their knees might touch. His voice is more quiet than she’s ever heard it, a soft rumble more than anything.

“My… my father. He was abducted along with my brother and Shiro,” she explains, hushed, almost as if she fears breaking the softness between them. “Sam Holt. Do you- do you know _anything_ about him?” She wasn’t proud of the desperation in her tone, of the frantic way her thoughts scrambled whenever she thought of her dad. Pidge didn’t know if he had even done research on her or Matt, if he would even care, but he just nods to her, presses his palm against the glass before he can catch himself.

“I can give you the information.” She wonders what he wants in return, but he doesn’t say; they sit there while she tells him about her father. About what he means to her, how he influenced her love of science and encouraged her; either he cared, or was just listening for the information. Pidge hoped it was the former. She boasts that, without the love and support of her family, its unlikely that she ever would have become a paladin in the first place. “If I wasn’t as adventurous, I’m sure I never would have…” She trails off, looking down at her folded hands, picking at the various stray threads coming off her shorts. “...nevermind. Thanks.”

“Of course.” Lotor replies, sitting now with his back to her, hand dropped. Pidge watches the way his hair drapes across his shoulders, down his back. It’s so long, and she wonders if he’d ever let her braid it, play with it. The strange lovesickness makes her heart twinge painfully- she can’t afford to be in love with him. Sure, she’s been sneaking out for months to see him, to get to know him, to teach him. And okay, so she’s divulged a few of her memories to him, about how important her family was to her- and _yes_ , she was constantly itching to hold his hand, but really, she has to stop this.

But she still wonders. What was his home like, before he made the choices that brought him here? “What was… your family like?”

“Mine?” his head turns just so, gazing at her from the corner of his eye. “... my mother was a Altean alchemist. Honerva. I think she must have died shortly after my birth; I wasn’t raised by her.” Pidge holds her breath, stiffening. “Just by a strange Galra woman, on a distant planet. And… you already know Zarkon.”

“....right. Sorry.”

“You’re just curious.”

Pidge wished that there wasn’t this stupid wall between them.


	4. So Frightened Of Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a mini-chapter for your guys! i have a convention to attend so i won't be updating until April! thank you so much for all the lovely comments and kudos <3

Allura considered herself to be kind, compassionate, and understanding.

As a princess (even of a forgotten, long-dead race), she had trained to be civil her whole life; to find solutions to issues in the least violent way possible, to bring those together who would otherwise slit the other’s throats. This was something she prided herself on, even when her words fell flat and her plans didn’t work. As such, she relied on having as much information accessible to her as possible; if she didn’t have the pieces, how could she make informed decisions? Of course, there were times when her emotions were stronger than her ability to problem-solve; but who hasn’t had that happen to them before?

It was this line of thinking that convinced her to hear out Lotor’s plans for as long as she had, to mediate between her paladins and him when tensions ran high, to check over their plans and run them and succeed. Allura thought she had all the pieces, felt confident enough that she’d been able to figure him out; but something was bugging her. Mainly, finding Pidge alone with him during early hours of the morning. From what she understands, the green paladin loathes Lotor- that’s all she’s seen her do, anyway. Fighting tooth and nail against every suggestion, pointing out his flaws and reminding the team that they can’t all trust him so easily. Pidge was good for reality checks in that way; she doesn’t parse words and won’t mince her opinions. She was strong, and Allura truly admired that about her.

They have a meeting again shortly after the failed rescue mission of Sam Holt in the bridge; she brings Lotor up without a struggle, as always, and he chats her up about her heritage, about her memories. But she always diverts his attentions, counters with questions, until they’re gathered in the room and Lotor brings up the obvious subject of the failed retrieval of Sam Holt. Allura sees Pidge go still out of the corner of her eye, lingers there as she watches her expression change from surprise to sadness. Her heart twinges as she sees her avert her gaze, turn cold to the room and keep silent, only piping up to explain a logistical failure or two as they continue to try and figure out where he could have gone. It's a long twenty doboshes before the relative calm of the bridge is shattered.

Coran tells them a transmission is coming through and, as the room falls silent, Zarkon appears on the screen. With tense anticipation, his offer hanging in the air like a poison cloud. The reaction is so immediate after the feed ends that she takes a step back.

“We _have_ to do it!”

‘ _Ah_ ,’ she thinks as the younger girl’s outburst rings through the room. ‘ _That’s about as expected_.’ She watches Lotor for a moment while the other paladins begin to reason with her. He’s stoic as he ever is, but he adds that this is easily- and most likely- a trap. They can’t trust Zarkon, and she agrees, putting her hand on Pidge’s shoulder.

“No, we’re doing it. This isn’t even a question. He has my _dad!_ ”

Allura wants to console her, to go after her rapidly retreating form, but before long she’s left. The other paladins give her a shrug and a look, but they discuss the course of action anyway. It doesn't sit right with her, the way Lotor watches Pidge leave, the slight clench to his jaw and fist. As if he wanted to say something, but was biting his tongue so hard it may as well fall off. Hunk brings up maps and Coran begins monologuing about tactics and weather and she can't even listen anymore. The quartet of mice sit on her shoulder, whisper in her ear about where Pidge has gone- the training room, pummeling the poor combat bot into a pile of rubble. Allura sighs, tells them to keep an eye on her, and ends the meeting.

"Are you sure you're fine with this?" She asks Lotor as she brings him back to the cell block, turning only slightly to face him as they keep pace. "Giving yourself up, I mean. It's incredibly dangerous if something goes wrong."

"There's nothing they can do to me that I cannot handle. If I get caught in the first place. We have to be on high alert." His tone doesn't change, and it's not the first time his monotone has irritated her. "It's unlikely we'll even get Commander Holt back at all."

"Well, we have to try, for her sake at least." Allura runs a hand through her bangs, pushes them back behind her ears. Silence, save for the tapping of their feet, is all that meets her in response, so she drops the subject, taps the wall and raises the walls around their captive.

Not ten ticks after she’s put Lotor back in his cell does she hear footsteps coming her way- she hides in the crevices between the hall lights, watching as Pidge glances about before entering the room. She approaches Lotor in a strange, familiar way, going right up to the hard light walls and pressing her hand against it- for a moment she wonders if the green paladin will unlock the cell, but it doesn’t seem to be so. Lotor is at her side in a moment, though, pressing his hand against it as well and whispering to her.

Allura doesn’t understand what this means, or why its happening, but it strikes a strange sense of doubt into her heart. Why was she coming down here, in secret, to talk to him? When had they gotten so close, and why? Pidge is near-violent towards him when around the other paladins and herself, so why is she acting as if they have some sort of friendship? She spots the mice on her shoulders, makes a mental note to ask them about this later. Fearing these thoughts would eat her, she tries to listen harder, to inch closer, but can’t hardly make out what they’re saying. Mostly, she hears the choked sobs that Pidge produces; they echo off the walls, reverberating back into the room. Its feels too personal, too intimate, and Allura excuses herself from her hiding spot quietly.

There’s a lot to think about.


	5. It's Never Seen The Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, and had a really good time at the con. Hope you enjoy this chapter!!! Please leave a comment if you did, it motivates me to continue writing~!

Pidge feels the soft grip of tiny hands on her shoulders, only sparing a moment’s glance to look at the rodents who took up roosting on her before flicking her eyes back to Lotor’s. He mutters about how he agreed to go through with her plan, goes over it in soft tones that make her heart sing and her hands shake. He notices, of course- she’s so close, her shoulders hunched up and lip wobbly as he palms the wall between them. She watches as he tries to catch her gaze, only giving in when he says her name in tone somewhere between the shattering of glass and a dying bird’s breath.

“What if- what if he _kills_ him, and I never get him back,” she garbles out, forehead pressed to the blue light, sobbing; she slides to the floor, knees weak beneath her grief.

“No, I wouldn’t let that happen.” Lotor mumbles, kneeling down to get a better look at her. “Listen to me. We will retrieve your father, no matter what it takes.”

“Are you sure? Are you fine with… with going back? What if they hurt _you_?” and her whole demeanor seems to change; her posture more forward, her head tipped towards him.

“I can more than handle myself.” Pidge traces over the gentle motion of his hand pressing harder against the light, adjusts her own to press onto his. She wonders if he feels it, too- the tug in their chests, the link between them taught with the strain of her agony, of her whirlwind emotions and the slight twinge of his lips as he looks at her has her thinking that maybe he does. “Pidge.” And god, she wants to hear her _real, actual name_ lift from his lips like that. “Will you fare alright? Alone, I mean.”

Pidge pauses, looks down at where their hands are separated, thinks. The whole situation with her dad is high-stakes, high-stress, and overall is so anxiety inducing that she isn’t sure that she’ll be able to sleep tonight. Shoulders heavy with stress (the soft touches of the mice unnoticed), she shakes her head, gives him a shrug.

“You could stay.”

With a nod so slight that she wasn’t sure if she moved her head at all, Pidge looks over to the panel on the wall, rises to her feet. Sending a few cautious glances towards the door and back, she taps in the security code that lets the blue lit walls fall from around Lotor’s cell. She’s not sure where all the fight in her went- this was beyond risky, more than just falling asleep down here a few times- Lotor looks at her with surprise as she approaches him. Her feet seem to drag as she reaches out for him, but he meets her halfway and grips her hand tightly in his own. The leather of his gloves is softer than she thought they’d be, and she finds herself stroking over his knuckles as he leads them over to the cot he’s been sleeping on.

“You sure you don’t mind…?” Her voice is so small, then, as she waits for him to answer- and when he nods, she slumps against his side, eyes closed and aching. She loathes the post-crying sensations- the heavy, puffy sensation beneath her eyes, the tacky dampness of her cheeks, the soreness in her nose. He’s wiping away the evidence of her weeping before she has time to articulate her thoughts, thumbing away still-falling tears and shifting to pull an arm around her middle.

Pidge feels so slight in his arms- she knew he was tall, of course; had been spending her time with him for months- but the gravity of just how much bigger than her he was just hit. She was more-or-less stuffed into his waist, just under his chest, able to hear the steady beat of his heart. Before she can stop herself, she’s opening her mouth to ask a question.

“Lotor… do you believe in soulmates?”

He’s quiet for a long time, staring at the wall opposite them, not quite moving or looking at anything in particular. Do the Galra even _have_ soulmate marks? Was it just a human thing?

“...I do. I find it difficult not to when the evidence lies on my own flesh.”

The silence stretches out between them after that, and she wonders if she overstepped a boundary, if somehow she’s ruined the softness of their… whatever this is. He presses at the armor plates protecting his arms, removing them with a mechanical hiss and leaving the lines of his gloves bare underneath. Her breath catches in her throat as she watches him lift the edge of his left glove, peel it away from his skin, expose the purple of his flesh to her and she sees in her plainest handwriting, her own name.

 _'Katie'_ , scrawled simply with the same wiggly dotted _‘i’_ she’s always used, sits there on his skin.

“I can only find it in myself to be saddened, since this name isn’t yours.”

Her heart is in her throat.

“Lotor, I-” and she bites her tongue, looks down at the evidence of their soul’s connection, wants to _laugh_ and _cry_ and shake him, tell him that _it is her_ , and she can’t quite find a reason not to. “That’s. Pidge isn’t my actual name-”

The sleeve on her arm feels like fire on her skin, and she untangles herself from him to push it up, to show him the characters she’s poured her time into for years and years and years- he’s grabbing her arm tightly in his hands, pulling it up to his face. He seems to still, harden, then soften all at once, the strain of his features lax as he gives her the most _lovestruck_ look she’s ever had directed at her.

“You’re… you’re _Katie_ ,”

Pidge lets herself get pulled to him, feels his arms across her back and shoulders, mice scattering away as her face is stuffed into his chest. She can feel the hammering of his heart, her own pulse loud in her ears as she reaches about him to cling to his body. He’s muttering her name like a mantra into her hair, her neck, pulling her up into his lap and she wonders if this elated feeling will last. It’s as if the rest of her world melts away, leaving just this raw, open feeling to bloom in her chest, taking root in her veins, spreading until she’s more feeling than human and is whispering into his chest. About how long she’s searched, how she didn’t want to believe it, how she couldn’t keep away and-

“Hush,” his back hits the cot, and it creaks under their combined weight, but he doesn’t seem to care and she can’t say she does either. “ _Hush_ , Katie. Hush.”

* * *

Allura is talking with the other paladins in the dining hall when the mice find her.

They skitter up her legs, tug at where her hair is loose and whisper into her ears. A report, of what they saw after she left. She listens while still paying attention to her Paladins (Lance and Hunk are discussing the best way to prepare a G’loby rump, Coran is busying himself with serving up something that is decidedly adjacent to goo, and Shiro is poking at the dish with barely-masked distaste), but has to pause as the tiny squeaks tell her something she wasn’t prepared to hear. She had thought, perhaps, that Pidge had been seeking out Lotor for his knowledge, to learn something, to figure out what made him tick. The green paladin was always thirsting for knowledge, hungry for every scrap of information presented to her.

Her mice tell her that Pidge opened up the cell, that she spilled out a secret- and Lotor did as well. That they share something that Allura didn’t quite expect.

 _A soulmark_.

Her own hand presses into the fabric covering her left wrist, glances over at Lance for a split second. The gravity of such a thing isn’t lost on her, and she silently thanks the mice for their information with a spoonful of whatever slop they were eating that night. How could she not have known about this? Hadn’t there ever been a moment where she saw the girl’s wrists, or Lotor’s? A quick search through her memory tells her that no, both have never even come close to revealing the names etched into their skins. But why now, of all times, was Pidge revealing this to Lotor, and him the same?  
  
It was more than dangerous- this jeopardizes everything they’ve been working towards, and they _still_ don’t know if they can trust the Galran prince- this could very well ruin the team and play into the Empire’s hands. The possibilities stretch endlessly in her mind’s eye, of the ways Lotor could spirit the left arm of Voltron away from them, slowly turn them against each other from the inside out, ruin the only thing standing between the total conquering of the known universe-

“-ra. Allrua? Princess?”

Lance is prodding her side with his elbow, tilting his head curiously. Allura comes to, looks at the emptied room, then back to him. “... where did…?”

“Everyone’s been done for like, twenty doboshes.”

Allura sighs, slumps in her seat, runs a hand through her hair before smiling at him. “Thank you, Lance. Sorry if I worried you.”

He takes a long pause, eyebrows furrowed. “No… no problem. I got your back, you know that.”

“Of course.”

And as he excuses himself from the room, the princess rests her head in her hands, rubs her temples, tries to calm her racing mind. She has to trust that Pidge knows what she’s doing, and that her will is stronger than anything that Lotor may offer her.

She really, really hopes she’s right.


	6. And The Wind Blows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little chapter for you guys! Thank you so so much for your continued support; you guys really make my day when I read your lovely comments.

Lotor doesn’t know how long they stay like that.

Pidge’s- _Katie’s_ \- crying had long since ceased, her small face stuffed into the side of his neck. He could still feel the tacky sensation of her skin on his as her tears dried, the only noises she makes soft sniffles and gentle breathing. A strange sense of ease fills him as they lay there, breathing slowly, his hand rubbing soothing strokes down her back. It was so incredible to him that they had found each other at all. To know that they were galaxies away from each other for so long, that both of them had actively sought the other out- it warmed him. Just contented with the fact that some fables about soulmates wind up being true.

The cot isn’t comfortable, not with their additional weight, but he doesn’t dare move from his spot, just keeping his breathing steady and easy, feeling her own sync up with his. She moves above him, lips parted slightly, and he waits.

“Do you think its… alright? For us to be like this?”

Lotor pauses, thinks for such long moments that he thinks he can see fear flash in those brilliantly amber eyes of hers.

“I think I’d rather be dead than deny myself your presence.”

With all the gentleness he doesn’t deserve, she offers him up a soft smile. He had often wondered if old tales were true- if with a single look, one’s soulmate had the ability to undo a person, from the tips of their toes to the top of their head. And Lotor felt as if he may be unraveling. By the stars, Katie didn’t have to say _anything_ ; he would- _has_ \- gone to the ends of the universe for her. The mark on his wrist pulses, warm to the touch as her fingers graze the skin; he follows her movements with his eyes as she raises it to her lips. His breath hitches, his chest tight- Katie laughs against his skin when she spots his look.

The paladin turns shy, then, lowering their joined hands and looking off to the side- her bangs fall into her eyes, obscuring their beauty and he wants to run his hands through it, pin it back, pin _her_ back- she breaks his train of thought will little more than the parting of her lips, the pinkness of them curled into a laugh.

“That’s- that’s the most cliché thing I’ve ever heard,” her laugh is like a songbird, and _oh_ , he’s not sure there’s any way out of the pit he’s fallen into.

He’s not sure that he _wants_ to.

* * *

That very next day, they leave for the exchange.

There are cuffs binding his wrists, not too loose that Zarkon might notice, by not nearly as tight as they should have been. The small shuttle they’re taking is crowded, but he can’t care; this plan is too delicate for him to get distracted. Matt’s piloting the ship, with Shiro to his right- Katie is sitting off to Lotor’s side, looking more and more ill as they approach their destination. She’s trying not to look at him, he can tell, but he simply bumps his shoulder against her’s in what could be seen as an accident. The flash of a shaky smile is all that he needs to see to know he’s comforted her.

The Castle was a distance away, for the eventual ‘just in case’ moment if Zarkon betrayed them- incredibly likely and not for no good reason. It was dangerous to agree to the situation, but with the sudden complications of emotions he was feeling- he snapped to, straightening his back. Focus. Breathe.

They land with little fanfare, Zarkon having already arrived. He’s surprised to spot his former generals there; but they just wanted to survive, surely. He knew the disdain they held for Zarkon, for the Empire. Lotor couldn’t find it in himself to fault them for it. Shiro and Matt leave first, and before Katie can leave she presses a quick kiss to his cheek.

“For luck,” she mumbles in a warm breath against his skin, and he feels stronger than he’s ever felt before.

It’s a few long moments before he’s retrieved, tugged along by her brother, meeting the gaze of his former generals from across the sand. They send Sam Holt over, the rags on him hanging loosely, as if he hadn’t eaten in several weeks. Which may as well be true, for all he knows; he starts the trek across the space between their ships, pauses for only a split second as they meet halfway. That was- a hologram. Ever so slightly translucent, just for a single flickering moment- but he couldn’t stop walking, keeping his slow pace until he was standing at Axca’s side.

“Dad!”

Katie has sprinted across the dry soil, and he didn’t want to watch, but found himself unable to look away as she went right through him. The paladin stumbled, turned, watched the hologram flicker out of existence and the pain on her face made a fury so hot burn through his veins that might be more anger than Galra.

“No!”

Of course, nothing could go right for him. Zarkon demanded the Lions, just as Lotor thought he might, and after that split second, hell broke loose.


	7. The Flower Cried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one isn't as shippy as the other chapters, but worry not, dear reader. i have plans.

After that moment, Pidge saw red.

No, it was something more than that- it was as if fury coursed through her very veins, poured into her heart and lit it aflame. It left nothing in it’s path, nothing but _ash_ and _rage_ and all she could think was ‘ _Of course it was a trap_ .’ She watched as Lotor swiftly removed himself from his shackles, begin to strife amongst her father’s captors; and that sight gave her strength, solidified her faith in him like nothing else could. Maybe that’s what had Matt following her as she sprinted to the carrier ship that Zarkon had arrived on, Shiro hot on their tails, passing by Lotor as he fought with his father. They just managed to scrape into the ship, Katie mindlessly slamming her body into the closest accomplice.   
  
She would _not_ lose her dad. Not again.

The rest of that fight passed in a blur of rage; she could feel how her spine protested even to the most simple movements after slamming into the dash, begging for someone- _anyone_ to _please_ just incapacitate them. Anti-gravity making her ill, her stomach churning and the rapidly increasing speed certainly wasn’t helping. The ship was nosediving, and she couldn’t get there in time to save her family and _fuck_ , this wasn’t how she wanted to die!

“Hold on!” her was father barely able to pull up in time- she could almost _feel_ the ground beneath them skirt the bottom of the ship.

Without even a moment’s hesitation, she slammed her hand into the airlock release, sending their assailants shooting out of the ship before it closed behind them. To her side, she watched her dad slump into his seat, didn’t even wait a heartbeat before she rushed him. Tossing her helmet to the side, Pidge threw herself at him, sobbing into his neck.  
  
“Dad!” She sniffled, grinning like an idiot in front of her brother and colleague, gripping the slave’s rags tightly in her hands. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, Katie.” he muttered into her hair, and she felt Matt press himself to them, could feel the tremors in his hands on her back.

“The shuttle is clear.” Shiro muttered from somewhere behind them, and her heart hammered in her chest. God, her dad was back, he was alive, he was- well. As well as she could’ve hoped he’d be.

“I have so much to catch you up on.”

* * *

 

Lotor couldn’t keep taking this.

Yes, he was strong, but more than that he was agile, swift, tactical. His father had been that way at some point as well, he knew, because this was not their first scuffle. Somehow in the years between then and now he had abandoned tactic for brute strength, the quintessence injectors in his back a testament to just how much he depended on that power to succeed. Was he getting weaker, or was his mind simply drifting from him?  
  
Deciding that he didn’t quite care, he concentrated on dodging, twisting his body to avoid his attacks, bounding off of rocks and sticking the black bayard’s sword straight into his back. He only managed to hit the quintessence reserves, saw it dripping down the machine strapped to him, felt it on his skin from the splashback. He was- still charging! The prince leapt to the side, continued to parry and dodge but this was getting tiring. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outlast Zarkon, not when he continued to have the liquid of life skirting his skin.

Before he knew it, he was slammed into one of the many protruding rock formations, feeling the back panels of his suit groan and snap; his bayard was knocked from his grip, laying prone several feet ahead of him. He looked up, tried not to let the pain show on his face, watched his bastard of a father lift it into his arms- and point it at him.

“Your fleet has been destroyed,” Lotor manages to hiss out, keeping himself low to the ground. “It’s over.”  
  
Slowly, the bayard-turned-blaster whirred to life in his hand, glowed, and Lotor could only think ‘ _Please, not yet- I’ve only_ just _found her-’_

“It’s over for you.”

He closes his eyes, cusses, waits for the heat of the lazer to reach him- but hears a distinctly different blast instead. He snaps his head up, turns it skyward, sees the Lions of Voltron raining fire down onto his father. In turn he saw Zarkon turn that very same blaster on them, the charge almost complete-

“No!” Rushing up, newfound strength found within him now that he knew they were there, he ripped a metal pike from the ground, leapt, _prayed_ -

The slick sound of metal sliding through flesh greets him, along with the painful, agonized scream of Zarkon as he topples over. The bayard glows, dims, fizzles out into nothing before his grip loosens, the weapon falling to the ground. He was more quintessence than anything, dripping with it, a husk more than a Galra.

Goodness, he needed a bath.

* * *

 

Somewhere distant, a witch sits alone.

The room she’s in is dark, deserted, nothing but the glow of the lights on the walls faintly pulsing along with her steady breaths. But just then, something shifted, pulled, snapped in her chest. Like she was being gripped tightly, stretched too far too thinly, before a hot rush of pain overtook her arm. It trailed from the tips of her fingers, through her wrist and _oh_ , that’s where it centered itself. With a terrified, shaking hand, she shoves up the sleeve of her robe, sees the outline of a familiar name flashing, warping, flickering against her skin and all she can think is ‘ _Wait, no-_ ’ before that pain mounts to unbearable levels.

The witch falls to her knees, hood tossed low from the force, white hair billowing about her as she pressed her fingers into her arm. As if it would help him, _heal_ him, fix whatever problem was causing him to- to-

A scream rips itself from her throat, a bloodcurdling noise that echoed off the walls in an seemingly endless feedback loop. She’s hunched over now, clutching her arm so tight that circulation very well may be cutting off. Ice had taken residence within her, spread over her, evened out the pain into a stinging frostbite that was taking over her whole being. He was… he was…   
  
“No,” she felt the tears cascading down her cheeks, unaware or uncaring, voice a broken croak in the emptiness of the room. “No…”

Zarkon was dead.

The name on her wrist faded, faintly grey, dulled.


	8. It Was Beaten By The Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a longer chapter to make up for the short ones lately! <3

Pidge is bouncing off the walls once they return to the safety of the castle; Matt and her dad hot on her tail as she re-gives the tour her brother’s already seen. Her father is equally as impressed, congratulating her for her achievements and staring up in awe at Green when she shows off her cloaking tech. They spend a long few hours pouring over her schematics, her father berates her for keeping her room a mess- it feels almost normal. As if she wasn’t endless galaxies away from Earth, from her mom and her own warm bed; like she wasn’t now a soldier, fighting in a war that wasn’t her’s, making advancements in technology that should be so far from her reach that she shouldn’t be able to understand.

As if she hadn’t found out her soulmate was a Prince from the very people they were fighting.

Quietly, she watches her brother and father talk amongst themselves, leaning against the only clean part of her wall, catching up. With a small, tense cough, she gets their attention- Matt sees her hand clasped tightly over her wrist, his expression hardening. Her father has no such tenseness in his face, catches the same movement, _bubbles_ with excitement. He moves around her mess easily, as if it was routine, and the normalcy of it made her feel no small amount of homesickness.

“Did you find them? Your soulmate?” He asks, sitting himself on her bed, and she wishes she could believe that her dad would be fine with this.

“I did, yeah. He…” here she glances at Matt, watches him turn his gaze from her. “...he has my name, too. He was looking for me.”

And her dad makes this small coo, clearly relieved and excited for her. “And?”

“And,” she continues, drags her gaze back to her dad. “He helped me save you. Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to help you, dad.”

It wasn’t a stretch, really- Pidge holds herself a bit more upright, feeling a bit proud. Lotor was a capable, intelligent, _beauty_ of a man and- while she wasn’t sure if she could really trust him before- she was certain she could now. He had helped her when she had nothing left, and she was just so incredibly _grateful_ that there wasn’t a doubt in her mind of where his allegiances lie.

“So? Who’s the lucky guy?” She feels his elbow nudge her playfully, a grin stretched wide on his face.

“Prince Lotor.”

His face falters, falls, confusion cleary writing itself over him. Pidge hold his gaze steadily, fingers digging into the skin around her wrist, feeling her pulse race underneath her skin. This was it- if her father couldn’t accept this, then she would really have to stop caring about the opinions of the others- she needed stability and acceptance in her life.

“Is that… so?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“And he’s good to you?”

Matt breaks his silence from the other side of the room, pushing off from the wall. “Dad, you can’t be serious-”

“Matt, please.” He intones, shooting him one of the famous Holt Family ‘ _you-better-watch-yourself_ ’ looks. Turning back to his daughter, he reaches out to pull her bruising hand away from her body, holding it warmly in his- “If he’s good to you, that’s all that matters. Prince of the Galra race or not, he’s still your soulmate.”  
  
Pidge whimpers, clambors over the mattress to hug her dad, throwing her arms over his shoulders. “Thank you,” she weeps into his shoulder. Pidge didn’t realize just how _badly_ she wanted her dad to approve of him, to know that she had finally, _finally_ found who’d she’d been looking for. She could hear Matt sighing, grumbling, mosey over to the bed and pat her on the back.  
  
“Alright, but if he hurts you, you tell me. I’ll kick his ass.”

“Matt,” Exasperated, she turns slightly and punches him in the hipbone.

* * *

 

Later, once her father’s getting prepped to leave, she sneaks away from the group, seeks out where Lotor’s hidden himself among the many endless halls of the Castle. She finds him in an alcove somewhere on the lower levels, sitting in the frame of one of the many windows, gazing at the stars. Either he doesn’t hear her come, or he has already known she’d be seeking him out- he doesn’t move from his spot, eyes transfixed by the sights.

“Don’t you get tired of looking at them? The stars, I mean.” Pidge mutters, walks over to the sill and places her hand on his shoulder.

“They’re always different, wherever we go. I wonder if the locals ever had time to document them.” He sounds so wistful that for a moment she wonders if she might be imagining it. “The Empire only ever used them to mark locations, and never marked them all. Too much work for them.”

“On Earth, we make pictures with the stars.”

Lotor turns to her, and she pats his arm once before he’s wrapping an arm around her waist, tugging her into his lap. “Why?”

“To give them reason to us.” Pidge looks out to see what he sees- an endless sky, littered with glittering stars and planets, both distant and near, simply idling along in the universe. Unknowing of their beauty, or perhaps on the very verge of death, as stars are ought to do. Twinkling their last messages as they fizzle and burst from existence. “We’d connect them, give them a name, a history. Track them across the sky until the planet rotated enough that the next set would show.”

“To track the rotation of your planet?”

“Less noble than that at first, really. More or less it was to pass the time, to utilize our imaginations so that we didn’t bore ourselves into an early grave.”

The prince is nodding, arms wrapped tightly about her middle, holding her to his chestplate as he returns his attention to those lonely stars. “Someday you’ll have to show them to me.”  
  
Pidge wonders if he’d like Earth at all. It’s not exactly fine and dandy- there’s a bit of an energy crisis, a water crisis- everything that was able to go wrong seemed to be going wrong. In that way, it was a relief to be so far from it, even if she missed the warmth of her own galaxy’s sun, and feel of the sand beneath her toes-  
  
“You’re drifting,” he mutters so softly she wonders if he had actually intended to speak at all. “What’s on your mind?”

“I was… thinking about my planet. I’m kind of relieved to be in space instead of there-” the young paladin wrapped her own arms around his, feel the rigidity of his armor. “- I never felt like I belonged, anyway. Out here, I’m a somebody; the Green Paladin of Voltron, tech guru and overall badass,” she jokes slightly towards the end, trying not to let the agony of her childhood seep into every word she speaks.

“You wouldn’t be here without the drive that made you seek out your family, Katie.” She startles at just _hearing_ her name; even though he’s said it before it still felt weird to hear it spoken aloud. “Just because every foolish soul on your planet didn’t want to see every strong quality you have doesn’t mean that they weren’t there in the first place.”

“Oh.” She feels a little overwhelmed. That… was probably one of the nicest things anyone outside of her family has ever said about her. “Do… you really think so?”

A single nod is all she gets in return; she feels his hand trace up and over her arm, settling on her wrist, lift up her sleeve. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him move, rest his chin on her shoulder and rub his thumb over her mark. This calms her nerves somehow, to have him so close and acknowledging her and pressing soft little kisses to the space just under her ear. Pidge sighed into him, craning her neck to let him get at her throat better.

Lotor makes a half- strangled noise, running his lips across her jugular, feeling her pulse with his mouth. He flicks his tongue against it and she whines, grips at the arm that’s still tightly wrapped about her middle. Pidge can feel his breath, hot against her sensitive skin, a shiver rocking down her spine as he pressed his mouth fully against the spot where her neck meets her shoulder. Making a truly embarrassing noise, she felt his hand move, shift, scaling up her stomach-

A soft cough breaks them from each other, her face beet red as she tries to scramble from Lotor’s lap. He grips her firmly, though, and she turns her head to see who disrupted their little meeting-

Allura has her arms crossed, hair loosely draping near her hips, a single eyebrow raised.

“A private room would be better suited to something like this, don’t you think?”

“Princess, I-” Pidge wants to hide from this whole interaction- she got _caught_ because she was too careless, but Lotor didn’t seem nearly as bothered.

“It’s fine, Pidge. I already knew.”

She didn’t get a chance to ask _why_ or _how_ , but she felt shame crawl up her stomach, settle there heavily. Pidge turns her eyes from her slowly, looking down at where her legs are pressed to Lotor’s.

“Spying, then, Princess?” Lotor rumbles above her and she wants to just slink away into some small hole, die there. “We’ll take our leave, then. No need to linger.”  
  
Allura starts to say something, but she doesn’t hear it over the pounding of her heart as she’s lifted easily, and Lotor starts his way down the hall. To regain her balance, she loops her arms around his shoulders, grips the cold metal of his armor in her small hands, stuffs her face into his chest and tries to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut.


	9. From The Wind Comes A Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, sorry for the wait! I'm starting to run into a bit of a rut, so if anybody has a suggestion they'd like to see happen, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message on my tumblr! 
> 
> shadow--mint.tumblr.com

Lotor takes her through the winding halls, avoiding the more well-walked paths of her fellow paladins in favor of the less traveled hallways, stopping only once he was sure they were far from prying eyes. Softly, he sets Pidge- _Katie_ \- down, hearing her whine as he pried her from his neck. It made heat shoot straight through him, that little noise, and he had to bite his tongue and tense his muscles to avoid pressing her against a wall. _One step at a time_ , he thinks as she grabs onto his forearms- not that he can feel it. The gauntlets he wears are too thick to translate the sensation and never before has he wanted to shed his armor so fast.

“I can’t believe she knows,” she’s saying, tone anxious as he tucks a wild lock of hair behind her ear. “What if she tells everyone?”  
  
“Then let her talk,” he says- he doesn’t have it in him to be ashamed. Perhaps he doesn’t understand the human social balances, because she looks more mortified.   
  
“I don’t _want_ her to tell everyone!” Katie is hissing, panicked, gripping at her hair and moving away from him. “What if they all hate me? What if- what if they kick me off the team? What if they think I’ll be too distracted?”

For a moment, Lotor is reminded of her age. She’s hardly an adult, approaching her late teens at the best. He wonders if she’s frightened, then, and nods his understanding even if he doesn’t really _get it_. Pidge was private, almost secretive, and he couldn’t fault her for that- he was the same way. Keeping your cards close to your chest was easier than letting them be seen, after all. He lets her wear herself out, yelling about all the ways everything could go wrong, could crumble into nothing around her, could leave her abandoned and alone and she tells him that she just doesn’t want to lose what she worked so hard to get.

She’s heaving with exertion by the time she’s done, and with the caution he affords to approaching a scared creature, he slowly reaches out to her, to cup her small face in his hands. Lotor isn’t sure at what point she started to let angry tears stream down her cheeks, but he wipes them away all the same, leans down low enough that he can kiss them away. He relishes in the fact that she presses forward first, straining on her tip-toes to catch his lips, and its just as explosive as he thought it’d be. Pidge’s lips are soft, moving against his in uncoordinated movements, and she somehow manages to crowd him against a wall. Lotor breaks away with a gentle laugh, a small smile, and he wishes he could save the image of her like this for forever.

“No matter what happens after this, Katie,” He watches her perk up at the use of her real name, sees the pinkish flush that overcomes her cheeks. “You can always find your place with me.”

* * *

 

Her feet are bare as she walks through this labyrinth one last time.

Ten-thousand and two deca-phoebs worth of experiments, logs, and all manner of artifacts line the shelves, the dull glow of some of them casting a blue or red glow to her cloak. With a sweeping motion, she runs her hand along them, taking step after agonizing step further and further into the depths of her records. Everything here had a story, yet most of them are lost to her, a remnant from a time long past that she hardly has memories of. Catching a glimpse of her wrist for just a moment, she lets her gaze linger on the faded name there, traces her fingers over the cold letters, shakes. _It shouldn’t be so difficult,_ she thinks, letting her arm fall back at her side as she comes to the center of this memory maze.

For the second time in her life, unbeknownst to her, she thinks; _I couldn’t save him._

Haggar lets out a burst of energy, the force of it searing against her palms, her arms, her very _being_. Rage and sorrow mixed into a cocktail of agony, swaying under the bits and blasts of power she releases, sweeping priceless artifacts and prized research off the shelves in a whirlwind of her own emotions. There was this empty place in her now, one she’d taken for granted during her too-long life, that she thought would always be there, even if it was no longer the same. Not that she had a clear idea of what ‘the same’ even was, anymore. Maybe at some point in her life she did; maybe it was a warmth, a comfort, to have him close and listening. Not for the first time, she wishes she could remember it better, wishes that the quintessence running through her veins, keeping her alive, hadn’t ruined her. She’d be a fool to think she was more than a husk with a bit of meat on its bones.

There was no way for her to turn back the clock, to warn Zarkon of his failure. Wishing was as good as prayer; useless, nothing more than a paltry comfort. If there was a god, if they favored her, then they wouldn’t have left her lonely and torn apart inside- half of a soul, ripped from the seams into a shriveled mess of a woman. Even calling herself _hollow_ didn’t feel right, because it was more than that- it was less a hole and more a vacancy where _he_ was meant to be. An essential organ, removed without permission, and even the life-giving energy that now flows through her veins couldn’t revive him. A horrible thought prickles the corners of her eyes with tears- _I didn’t get to say goodbye._

There’s so much work to do.


	10. The Clouds Don't Move Anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to @FantasyMagicGirl who gave me a nice little prompt that my brain couldn't get out fast enough!!

There’s a tenseness in the room.

Her father and brother sit at one side of the table, and she’s fidgeting in her seat across from them, sitting to Lotor’s side. He had towered over her (she barely comes up to his rib-cage), and she didn’t know why she was so surprised to see how he dwarfed both her brother  _ and _ her father.  _ This shouldn’t surprise me _ , she thinks as she watches Matt send her soulmate the dirtiest look he could while still seeming acceptably polite. Her father held his stress in his shoulders, only slightly hunched over with his elbows resting on the table. Pidge had wanted to introduce them properly before her father left, but now she’s wondering if it's such a good idea.

Lotor, to his credit, seems particularly unbothered by the way her family is acting, and she thanks her lucky stars that Matt is able to hold his tongue. Her hands are bunched into fists on her lap, and it’s making her arms shake- the green paladin nearly jumps out of her skin when she feels the semi-familiar touch of his hand on her own. His fingers envelope her’s so easily and she takes a deep breath, steeling herself for the agony of this interaction.

“So,” Pidge starts, slowly and cautiously flicking her gaze towards her brother. “This is Lotor.”

“Greetings.” Lotor rumbles beside her- he’s stroking her fingers, now, and she’s not sure its to quell  _ her _ anxiety anymore.

Matt looks livid; she can see the way his jaw tenses, the way his shoulders harden.

Her father- well. She can’t quite read his expression. It’s like he’s analyzing him, trying to discern his whole personality from the simple introduction. His eyes flick from her to him and back again, and a slow nod starts to bob his head.

“Samuel Holt. It’s… nice to meet you, Lotor.” He holds out his hand, and Lotor takes it, gives him a firm handshake and  _ this was a mistake _ , why did she even _ bother _ -

Pidge must have spaced out for several minutes, because the next thing she remembers is feeling Matt’s foot nudge her under the table. With a small jolt, she looks around, watching as her father is engaging with Lotor in a conversation about- she listens for a minute- fuel conservation? Utilizing non-traditional forms of fuel in an effort to lessen the universal impact? Huh. Both her and Matt watch as they comfortably talk each other up, and she offers her brother a glance- this was better than she expected, but then again, her Dad and Lotor seemed to be huge nerds. It really shouldn’t surprise her so much. Pidge relaxes in her seat, lets her eyes slip closed, and just listens to the idle chatter of her family and her soulmate.

_ Which, _ she thinks with a small smile, _ is what he is, now, too. _

* * *

 

Later, after their guest had departed the ship and sent on his way home, Lotor finds himself drifting along the endless labyrinth of the Castle’s halls, letting his mind wander. A lot had happened to bring him up to this point in time. For such a long stretch of it, he feared he’d be trapped in this place for the rest of his days, unable to stretch his legs, to fly, to seek out that which he so desperately wanted. How fortunate it was, then, that he had found precisely who he was looking for. Perhaps he had trusted too easily, but he could feel that tug in his wrist, the sheer euphoria at finally finding  _ her _ . The one whom he thought he’d be a seeking out forever, into the vastness of the galaxy, stretching his reaches out into the unknown and unsearched parts of the universe. Lotor wandered for quite some time in this solitude, only the click-clack of his boots present to remind him that he was alive, before he thought he heard muffled voices. Cautiously, he takes a few more steps forward-

“I dunno, Takashi, I just… can’t shake this feeling.” 

Lotor pauses on his walk, stopping just outside a door that didn’t manage to slide all the way shut. That was definitely Katie’s voice, but who is- oh. He glances in, see’s the black paladin from the side, seemingly deep in thought. Was that his actual name, and not a fond nickname that the rest of them call him? How… interesting. The prince lingers near the door, staying out of sight, but close enough to see and hear the conversation between them more or less.

“Katie, I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’ll get back home safely, and your mom will get to see him again, okay?”   
  
Lotor watches as Shiro lifts his hand to tilt her head up towards him, using his thumb to wipe away stay tears that spilled down her cheeks. A harsh pang of jealousy rings through him- who gave him the  _ right _ to be so tender with her?

“But what if something goes  _ wrong _ , what if the same thing that happened to  _ you _ happens to  _ him _ , what if they  _ take him _ and- and-”   
  
“Shhh, Katie. Look at me.” Lotor follows the hunch of his soulmate’s shoulders, the gentle way she sniffles and lets her lip wobble. “He’ll be alright. Nothing bad will happen to your father.”   
  
What an interesting thing, to see the vulnerability in her face, to watch as she slowly comes around with a short nod. That hand never leaves her face; it lingers there, strokes her cheek, trails down to rest on her shoulder. This is-  _ infuriating _ . Surely,  _ he _ could have comforted her as well? Why did she go to Shiro instead? They seemed more friendly with each other than he’d previously observed, but then again… he hadn’t been out that long. Maybe this is how they always were, and he just hadn’t seen it before. It makes sense that they might be closer than he once thought- she’d known him longer, had spent more time around the other paladins than around him. It shouldn’t make him so envious, but the feeling tugs at his heartstrings anyway, knowing that Shiro was one of few who had the privilege of knowing her real name. He clenches his hands into fists, leans heavily against the wall, and takes a few deep breaths.

Katie was  _ his _ soulmate.  _ She _ knew this, and  _ he  _ knew this, so she surely wouldn’t go off to flirt with other people. He had to assure himself of this, even as he hears the sob that rings through the room, hears Shiro coo to her and when he glances again, he’s pulled her into a hug and is whispering something to her that the prince can’t hear. She clings to him like a lifeline, so firmly that he can see the white of her knuckles straining against the taut skin of her hands. Perhaps he should walk away now, distance himself from what’s clearly a private conversation- but his curiosity was often stronger than his willpower. He lingers at that opened door, watches as Katie clambors up into his lap to hug him more firmly, and tries to decode the body language. Clearly she’s stressed, but the longer she stays curled up like some sort of pet against Shiro, he can see her relax ever so slightly. He’s rubbing up and down her back, continuing his ceaseless whispering, and Lotor has to pry his eyes away.

With lighter steps, now, he continues his way down the hall, not stopping until he reaches the food hall and seats himself at the long table.

“Oh, hey, you hungry?” Lotor nearly jumps out of his skin- surely he would have noticed if someone else was in the room-? “You look like you need a snack. Hold on, I’ve been making some good-ol comfort foods.”   
  
That was- the yellow paladin. Hunk. Lotor smooths his hair back, trying to regain some sense of regality as he watches the large human bustle about the prep station. It smells- good, actually, like real food instead of rations, and without permission his stomach lets out a loud rumble. How absolutely mortifying- but Hunk just laughs, taking something out of an oven and setting it down. The scent is stronger now, and he rests his elbows on the table and rests his head in his hands while the paladin takes his time plating whatever it is he’s made.

“Here, try it. I get real sick and tired of eating food goo, so I usually take the time to make supper for everyone. I mean, like, its made for  _ my _ tastes, but you seem like you have a good sense of things that are delicious, right?” Hunk laughs, setting a full plate of… something down in front of him, along with a standard set of utensils. “It won’t bite, don’t worry! And I’m pretty confident its not poisonous to Galra. Double checked.”

“...Thank you.” Lotor mumbles politely, taking a decent cut out of whatever meat this was- and the moment it touches his tongue his eyes light up. Hunk makes a pleased noise as he watches him, and Lotor can’t even find it in himself to be mad. It’s delicious- savory, juicy, with just enough zest that he keeps going back for more mouthfuls, until all that’s left on the plate is some sauce that had been drizzled along the top.

“Glad to see that you like it, man! If you want seconds, tell me.”

“It was- delicious. I haven’t had such a nice meal in a long time.”

Hunk beams under the compliments, laughing heartily and Lotor wonders, briefly, why he’s being so nice. It wasn’t as if he was mean before, but to go from standoffish to polite- hell,  _ jovial _ , it made interest rear itself within him. “Hey, no problem. You really proved yourself out there, and since Pidge trusts you, it’s only fair that I do.”

Lotor tenses just slightly- did… Allura say something to him? “And… why would that make you trust me, paladin?”

“Well, you’re soulmates, yeah? She told me a while ago about it.” Hunk tilts his head as he cleans up the table, covering up the leftovers for when the rest of the castle decides to drift in. “She made me swear not to tell anyone, but you guys seemed like you got close, so I figured you knew… y-you did  _ know _ , yeah?” 

He lets a long pause stretch between them, watching as Hunk grew more and more distressed, before offering a small nod to him. “Yes. We know that we’re soulmates.”   
  
“Whew, oh, thank god,” Hunk sighs and slumps against the counter tops. “She would have  _ killed me _ if I wound up telling you before she could.”

They spend a decent chunk of time chatting about everything and nothing, about good food and old recipes that have been lost to time. Lotor indulges Hunk’s curiosity, tells him about the simple foods he ate as a child, even though they weren’t much better than a fuzzy image and a distant feeling. In return, he goes on at length about Earth foods, what he misses and what he wishes they could find out here. Hunk talks about how he’s made do, but really, there’s no place like home and he just wants to feel a twinge of nostalgia. There’s a short, but not uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then Lotor hears someone coming up to the dining hall.

Lance walks in with Allura on his arm, and Lotor wonders if this is what having friends is like.

All of them sit around, discussing nothing too important, sharing the meal that Hunk’s made for them. Lotor helps himself to a second serving, even as the atmosphere becomes more comfortable than he’s ready for. It feels like he’s intruding, somehow, on this happy scene- the princess engages in conversation with him freely, as if she didn’t catch him making a pass at Katie earlier this evening. As if she hadn’t kept him locked up in the same cell for phoeb after tense phoeb, as if she didn’t hold a delicate piece of information in her hands that could ruin everything in the blink of an eye. He’s about to excuse himself when Shiro and Katie stroll in, one after the other. He knows where she was, feels a sting of jealousy, but keeps it to himself even as she sits a bit far away from him. 

The distance feels cold.


	11. And Yet, The Flower Chooses Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL I'm sorry this took so long to put out. I get distracted real easy. But I hope you like it!

It feels like sinking.

This isn’t the first time she’s felt this awful sensation creep through her intestines, settle into the lining of her stomach, make her gut twist hard enough that she wants to vomit. Heaving brings nothing but air from her body, until she’s sore and feels like her ribs very well may be broken. The darkness engulfs her, swallows her up like she was nothing, crawls over her skin and sinks in through her nose. Like suffocating, like being strangled within an inch of her life- she kicks but can’t feel her legs, punches forward but can’t feel her arms. Takes a step but only falls flat onto her side, hears more than feels her head crack against the floor. It’s like torture, like someone is playing with her very being, stretching her thinly then smashing her back together in an endless, painful loop. Not for the first time, she squeezes her eyes shut, tries to scream but all that comes up is that darkness-

Pidge shoots up straight in bed, panting harshly and looking about the room in a blind panic. Everything is the same as it always has been in here- messy, littered with clothes and scrap metal and mementos, and for a moment she just focuses on that. Pidge tries her best to let the familiarity ground her, but it’s not  _ enough _ , and it's not the  _ right kind _ of grounding; no matter how many times she looks around at the mess she’s made, it only makes her feel even more alone, even more isolated. The cubby her bed is in makes her feel more than a little swallowed up, and her stomach churns, so she leaps from bed in a tangle of limbs, snagging a pair of shorts from the ground to slip over her hips. 

When she used to have nightmares like this, she’d seek out her brother. He was comforting and quiet, let her weep into his chest and fall back asleep feeling safer, but he’s not here now. He has responsibilities just like her, so he can’t stay in the castle, no matter how badly she wishes he could. Her next best bet was Shiro- but he took on a solo mission yesterday, and hasn’t come back yet. And the other paladins? Well. She doesn’t want to wake them up when they all really need the rest. But the longing for comfort still ate away at her chest, gnawed on her heart like a dog’s toy, made her start wandering the cold halls of the castle at the late hour. The lights are dim enough that it casts everything in a surreal glow, like she’s not really here, and it’s this sort of thing that makes her wonder if she ever woke up, or if the dream just progressed into this distant, lonely feeling.

So she counts her heartbeats, walks in time with each pump, looks out the giant windows and tries not to feel small. Pausing, she drags her hand along the glass pane, reminds herself that she’s alive and breathing, but she’s crying anyway- by now the nightmare has just begun to fade from memory, leaving the suffocating feeling behind. The stars stretch into forever, passing by lazily as the ship continues to fly through space, inky blackness seeping into the edges of her vision the longer she gazes out into the abyss. Her hands grip the sides of her arms tightly enough that she can feel the sting of her nails biting into sensitive flesh. With her head pressed flush against cold glass, she wonders about being so far from home, about if the war will end with Zarkon now dead, about the pressure that rests heavy on her small shoulders. 

Pidge had never wanted this. She’d never wished to become a icon for hope, fighting day in and day out for not only her own life, but for the life of billions upon billions of other lifeforms. All she had wanted was to figure out the truth of her family’s disappearance, to find out  _ why _ they didn’t want to let the public know what happened and now- well. Now she understood why. If the general population had found out that  _ aliens kidnapped a bunch of astronauts _ , then the whole planet’d be in a tizzy. And even though she hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about being a galaxy-saving kick-ass human who gets to see a bunch of aliens and work on their tech, it had grown on her. This was  _ part _ of her now, and no matter where she went or what she did, it would follow her to the grave. 

What an absolutely terrifying thought.

The time stretches out until she loses track of it, until her eyes strain from starting at the same cluster of stars as they drift along in space. Her wrist tingles, like something is reaching out for her, seeking out her lonely heart and tugging on her veins. Shoving up her sleeve, she stares down at that inky mark, watches it move with her pulse, counts the beats until she begins to hear footsteps trail down the hall. It stops just short of her, the sound both familiar and new, and she really doesn’t want to turn around and face whoever stumbled upon her in her delirious, half-awake state.

But of course it was him. 

“Katie.” A hand settles on her shoulder, bare without the heavy gauntlets that usually adorn his arms, starkly purple against the white of her sleep shirt. “You’re up awfully late, don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She mutters, because the weariness makes her mouth feel like its stuffed with cotton. “I… had a nightmare.”

There’s a breath between them, a long moment where he doesn’t move from behind her, but also doesn’t make a move to comfort her. Not that she expected anything- no matter how touchy they’d been in the past few weeks, she still doesn’t really know how to act around Lotor, or what he really wants from her. Then, with a hesitation that spoke of how nervous both of them were, she feels his hand become more of a firm grip, turning her around to face him fully. Then, softly, he tilts her chin up to look him in the eyes, rubbing his thumb along her chin and making a soft sort of trill to her. It was like she was a crumbling shamble of a person, feeling her lip wobble before she pitched forward, arms wrapped tightly around his middle and her face stuffed firmly into his chest.

“There you are,” Lotor rumbles, strokes her hair and guides them to sit on the windowsill, pulling the small girl into his lap and rubbing his hand down her back. “You’re safe. Talk me through it, if you wish; it may help.”

So she does; she talks of the unsettling weight in her guts, the way she can even still feel it now, a phantom sensation that makes her feel like she might vomit. Pidge walks him through the way it made her panic, her vision darkening and her sense of touch leaving her until all she could do was hear her own cries as she was engulfed by an all-consuming darkness. He rubs her back the whole time, tracing patterns against the fabric of her top, letting her wear herself down until the only noise she was making were fading sniffles. It was strange to feel closer to his skin this way- there was no armor in the way, just the plain set of sleep clothes that loosely hung off his body. Pidge pinches the plain fabric between her fingers, rubs it to try and ground herself- and this time, it works. Her shoulders slump, and she feels his chest rise and fall in steady increments, soothing in ways that being alone just doesn’t provide.

Lotor pauses for just a moment, cradles her head in his hands and wipes away the stray tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes. “You poor thing. What an awful nightmare.” His long fingers linger on her cheeks, leaning her face upwards so that he might look at her better. Pidge avoids his gaze, looking off the the side where she can see that slow drifting of star clusters. “You may always seek me out for comfort, you know. I wish to help you.”

With a small noise, she feels her breath hitch, her hands tightening their grip on his shirt. “I just- I don’t want to be a bother, or- or anything. I’m sure you have problems of your own to deal with.” 

Becoming independent since coming into Voltron was both an incredible strength of hers, and often was brought her down the hardest. Hell, she’d known Lance and Hunk since before coming up here and  _ still _ didn’t feel comfortable going to them with her more emotionally based problems. It was no fault of their own- she just honestly wasn’t used to it. The only person she’d ever emotionally depended on was her brother, and she couldn’t exactly do that anymore.

“Katie, this isn’t-” Lotor sighs, trails his fingers back to run through her hairline. “We’re soulmates, yes? This is what we should do for each other. I’ll be here for you to lean on.”

“Oh.” Of- of course. She flicks her gaze down to his wrist, where the sleeve of his shirt rode up enough that she can see her own messy scrawl on his wrist. He was always going to be there for her now, wasn’t he? “I- I guess I thought that maybe you wouldn’t want to- to handle my-” What, her outbursts? Meltdowns? “-my problems.”

He pulls her back into his chest, presses a soft kiss to the crown of her head, and for now, that’s all she needs. “They’re  _ our _ problems, now. Your burdens can rest on my shoulders.”

That was part of being soulmates. At least according the the texts she’d read about it on Earth in the early years of her research. They were inseparably linked, and the longer they stayed in contact or close proximity with each other- well, the better they’d be able to feel what the other is feeling, for one. They must’ve just started getting to that point after spending months so close, even though it was through a hard wall of light and not from them directly touching. Perhaps that’s how he knew where she was- he sought out where the tug in his skin was, could track her through her sadness and fear. If she focuses for a moment, lets her mind wander, she thinks that maybe she can feel his fondness seeping into her, comforting and consoling her as it were. 

But the way he’s rubbing her back, lingering at the nape of her neck- its both familiar and strange, as if he wasn’t going about this as he usually would. But thinking too hard on the subject was just making exhaustion pull at her eyelids, attempting to bring her under the spell of slumber. Just as her breathing starts to even out, she hears him begin to speak once again.

“I wasn't fond of believing in soulmates.”

Pidge raises her head, looks up at him with a curious, if a bit sleepy, glance. “Why?”

“Because my mark didn’t show up for thousands of years.” Lotor mumbles, and she can see the way his jaw clenches, as if he’s not entirely sure if he should say anything. “I’d read books, of course. About when marks appear, how they manifest on your skin in an act of pain. And when I waited for my soulmate’s name to appear, decade after lonely decade, I thought for certain that I didn’t have one. That I was…” The word ‘unlovable’ hangs heavy in the air despite his not saying anything, his brows knitted as he recounts the history of his life to her.

She grips his wrist tightly, and he sighs with the sort of pain that speaks volumes of just how  _ alone _ he’d felt. “How long before my name showed up?”

“Ten thousand years.” Her heart ached for him- to go so long thinking himself undeserving of affection, of love- “I thought myself singular, too important for a soulmate to worry about. But the day your name was burned into my flesh, Katie, I…” Lotor takes in a sharp breath. “...I felt  _ invigorated _ . I researched the letters, compared them to all the languages I both knew and ones I didn’t, traveled the galaxy both in service to my father  _ and _ to seek out the owner of this name. I taught myself a few dozen Earth languages just to make sure I was getting it right.

“I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know how Earthlings  _ acted _ , what was a good way to approach you if I ever did find you, if soulmarks were something you even had.” Pidge laughs here, an airy sound that she can see makes him smile. “Out of everything, I didn’t think you’d be a paladin of Voltron.” The stars sparkle in his eyes, her own grin fond as he cradles her face in his hands. “Or that you’d use a fake name. You kept me guessing.”

They devolve into laughter, her skin taking on a slight flush as he peppered her face with tiny kisses, his hands tugging her further up his body until they were properly face-to-face. Then, tenderly, she leans up to press a breathless kiss to his lips, tiny hands clinging to the front of his shirt. There’s a pleased sort of rumble that she can feel in his chest that pushes past his lips in a vibration against her own, and Pidge makes a half-laugh, his hands keeping her firmly pressed to him as they kiss against the starry backdrop of the window. After long moments where they suck breaths in between sweet presses of skin, she tucks her head under his chin, content just to breathe his scent in. 

“I was… born with mine.”

He perks up, rests his hands on her hips and glances down at that wild mane of hair that sticks out under the point of his chin. 

“My family didn’t make me feel bad about it but I was… ostracized for having a ‘defective’ mark. Earth didn’t know- and  _ still _ doesn’t know- about alien planets, or the Galra. I had no resources to look for, nothing to go off of, and nothing on my planet even came  _ close _ to matching the writing on my wrist.” Here she pauses, looks at her arm resting on his shoulder. “Its part of the reason why I wanted to get into space research, to become an astronaut. So I could travel through space to find whoever my soulmate was. But we don’t have super advanced tech like you all do out here- we’re light years behind. But I still held out hope that I’d find you.

“I would make up stories about you,” She continues, because she’s such an easy, open book to read around those she trusts, even in part. “Like you were some sort of space prince that would sweep me off my feet and whisk me away from all the people who wronged me. And I guess in part, that’s a bit true. You  _ are _ a prince.”

Pidge keeps her face pressed to his throat, can feel the steady beat of his pulse in his neck, against her cheek. It still amazed her that she was able to find him  _ at all _ , because she had just gone so very long thinking she’d be alone for the rest of her days- “I’m… so happy that I was wrong. I didn’t want to like you at first, but I…” Pidge trails off, curling up a bit more atop his body. 

What more could she even say? 

“I’m glad it’s you.”


	12. Darkness Like The Light Of True Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the conclusion of this fic-- sorry for disappearing like that. Even though this chapter is more like a drabble, please know that I loved writing this and loved reading your comments! This was all that I had planned to happen (cutting off just before the Lotor betrayal), but if there's interest in a continuation, I'll consider it.

Kuron was meant to be on a reconnaissance mission.

Instead, he was now walking the long halls of some outpost, far away from the Castle, following the call of a woman with a voice like breaking glass. His footsteps echo against the metal, his skin cast in purple, and as he approached the looming figure of the witch, he couldn’t help but feel as if this time, things were different. Something had changed, and he’s not sure what it might be; but the witch has a look about her, dangerous and hollow. He knows better than to ask as she paces, talking about the grand scheme that he’d been pushing for, and he can hardly listen. With each meeting like this, each one more harrowing than the last, Kuron is finding himself less and less willing to follow through. These people have become his friends, his allies; even though he wasn’t the  _ real  _ Shiro, he certainly felt like him.  Thinking of them now, he wishes things could be different. That he could keep them  _ truly  _ safe, protect them from the end he is bringing about; give them peace where he will only bring hardship and strife. 

What a silly wish.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

Kuron leaves with his goals ever clearer, narrowed.


End file.
